“Conundrums” spooled off steel pipe when towed across the English Channel after D-Day.

To provide vital oil across the English Channel after the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings, within months secret pipelines were unwound from massive spools to reach French ports.

Wartime planners knew that following the D-Day invasion Allied forces would need vast quantities of petroleum to continue the advance into Europe.

The secret pipeline mission used a popular Walt Disney character for its logo.

Allied leadership also knew that petroleum tankers trying to reach French ports would be vulnerable to Luftwaffe attacks. A secret plan looked to using new undersea pipeline technologies.

To prevent fuel shortages from stalling the Normandy invasion, a top-secret “Operation PLUTO” – Pipe Line Under The Ocean – became the Allied strategy. It would fuel victory with oil production from the U.S. petroleum industry.

Although by 1942 the industry had laid thousands of pipe miles of across all manner of terrain, to span the English Channel would require an unprecedented leap in technology. The channel was deep, the French ports distant, and the hazards unpredictable. In great secrecy, two approaches were developed.

The first PLUTO system required a new kind of pipe that looked more like an undersea communications cable than an oil pipeline. It exploited existing subsea cable technology, but instead of a bundle of wiring at its core, a three-inch flexible lead pipe would carry fuel.

Following D-Day on June 6, 1944, Operation Pluto pipelines fueled the advance into Nazi Germany. Image from “World War 2 From Space,” a History Channel documentary.

“Men of experience estimated the oil destroyed at 150,000 barrels. It will be many months before a large supply can be had from this source…” — Gen. William “Grumble” Jones report to Gen. Robert E. Lee

In perhaps the first raid on an oilfield in warfare, a regiment of Confederate cavalry in the spring of 1863 attacked the oil town of Burning Springs in what would soon become West Virginia. The rebel raiders destroyed equipment and thousands of barrels of oil.

On May 9, 1863, the Burning Springs oilfield was destroyed by Confederate raiders led by Gen. William “Grumble” Jones. His brigade of Confederate cavalry attacked near the Ohio River in far western Virginia.

The surprise attack along the Kanawha River by Gen. Jones marked the first time an oilfield was targeted in war, “making it the first of many oilfields destroyed in war,” proclaimed petroleum historian and author David L. McKain in a 1992 book (also see Oil in War).

The Burning Springs oilfield (at bottom) was destroyed by Confederate raiders in May 1863 when Gen. William “Grumble” Jones and 1,300 troopers attacked in what some call the first oilfield destroyed in a war. Map courtesy Oil & Gas Museum, Parkersburg, West Virginia.

According to McKain, Gen. Jones later reported his rebel troops left burning oil tanks, a “scene of magnificence that might well carry joy to every patriotic heart.”

West Virginia Oil History

“After the Civil War, the industry was revived and over the next fifty years the booms spread over almost all the counties of the state,” explained McKain, who founded an oil museum in downtown Parkersburg. He collected many of the artifacts on display in the former warehouse – and often was seen driving his black truck loaded with rare oilfield equipment.

In May 1861, the Rathbone brothers used a spring-pole to dig a well at Burning Springs that producied 100 barrels of oil a day.

Almost a century before the Civil War, George Washington had acquired 250 acres in the region because it contained oil and natural gas seeps.

“This was in 1771, making the father of our country the first petroleum industry speculator,” noted McKain, author of Where It All Began, a history of the West Virginia petroleum industry.

As early as 1831, natural gas was moved in wooden pipes from wells to be used as a manufacturing heat source by the Kanawha salt manufacturers.

Then in 1861 at Burning Springs, the Rathbone brothers’ spring-pole oil well reached 303 feet – and began producing 100 barrels of oil a day.

“These events truly mark the beginnings of the oil and gas industry in the United States,” said McKain, who died in 2014.

Founded by David L. McKain, the Oil and Gas Museum is near the Ohio River at 119 Third Street in downtown Parkersburg, West Virginia. As early as 1831, natural gas was moved in wooden pipes from wells to be used as a manufacturing heat source by salt manufacturers. Photo by Bruce Wells.

“Drilling and producing of both oil and natural gas continues throughout the state to this day,” added McKain, founder of the Oil and Gas Museum in Parkersburg.

The incredible wealth created by petroleum was key to bringing statehood for West Virginia during the Civil War, he claimed. “Many of the founders and early politicians were oil men – governor, senator and congressman – who had made their fortunes at Burning Springs in 1860-1861,” McKain explained. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation admitting the state on June 20.

Burning an Oilfield

When Confederate Gen. William “Grumble” Jones and 1,300 troopers attacked Burning Springs in the spring of 1863, they destroyed equipment and thousands of barrels of oil.

Confederate cavalry Gen. William “Grumble” Jones

“The wells are owned mainly by Southern men, now driven from their homes, and their property appropriated either by the Federal Government or Northern men,” said Gen. Jones of his raid on this early oil boom town.

Gen. Jones officially reported to Gen. Robert E. Lee that:

All the oil, the tanks, barrels, engines for pumping, engine-houses, and wagons – in a word, everything used for raising, holding, or sending it off was burned.

Men of experience estimated the oil destroyed at 150,000 barrels. It will be many months before a large supply can be had from this source, as it can only be boated down the Little Kanawha when the waters are high.

The Oil and Gas Museum, maintained by volunteers, added a small museum at Burning Springs and a park at California, about 27 miles east of Parkersburg on West Virginia 47.

In addition to Where It All Began, McKain published The Civil War and Northwestern Virginia – The Fascinating Story Of The Economic, Military and Political Events In Northwestern Virginia During the Tumultuous Times Of The Civil War.

Top Secret WWII project sent Oklahoma drillers into British oilfield. They added more than one million barrels of oil production by 1944.

As the United Kingdom fought for its survival during World War II, a team of American oil drillers, derrickhands, roustabouts, and motormen secretly boarded the converted troopship HMS Queen Elizabeth in March 1943. Once their story was revealed years later, they would become known as the Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest.

A photograph of the 42 volunteers from Noble Drilling and Fain-Porter Drilling companies taken before they secretly embarked for the United Kingdom on March 12, 1943, aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, which had been converted into a troop transport ship. Photo courtesy of the Guy Woodward Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

By the summer of 1942, the situation was desperate. The future of Great Britain – and the outcome of World War II – depended on petroleum supplies. At the end of that year, demand for 100-octane fuel would grow to more than 150,000 barrels of oil every day – and German U-boats ruled the Atlantic.

In August 1942, British Secretary of Petroleum, Geoffrey Lloyd called an emergency meeting of the Oil Control Board to assess the “impending crisis in oil.” (more…)

A reluctant U.S. Navy recognized oil produced far more energy per pound than coal and simplified resupply logistics.

Commissioned in 1914, with coal-powered boilers that were converted to use fuel oil in 1925, the USS Texas “was the most powerful weapon in the world, the most complex product of an industrial nation just beginning to become a force in global events,” noted one historian. Photo courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department,

When the USS Texas was commissioned in 1914, it became the last American battleship built with coal-fired boilers. Converted to burn fuel oil in 1925, the “Mighty T” experienced a dramatic improvement in efficiency. The worldwide change from coal to oil-fired boilers at sea would become another important chapter in American petroleum history.

When the industrial revolution ended the “age of sail,” coal that fired the boilers of steam-powered ships became a strategic resource. Worldwide “coaling stations” were essential at a time when oil was little more than a crude lubricant or patent medicine.

As early Pennsylvania oilfield discoveries continued, Congress in 1866 appropriated $5,000 to evaluate petroleum as a potential replacement for coal to fire the Navy’s boilers. The “experts” decided to stay with coal.

USS Texas was the last American battleship to be built with coal-fired boilers. Sailors shoveled over 124,000 cubic feet of coal – 2,891 tons – to fill its bunkers. Photos courtesy History Magazine, March 2006.

“The conclusion arrived at was that convenience, health, comfort and safety were against the use of petroleum in steam-vessels,” reported Admiral George Henry Preble. “The only advantage shown was a not very important reduction in the bulk and weight of fuel carried.” (more…)

Shelling of Ellwood field at Santa Barbara, California, created mass hysteria and the “Battle of Los Angeles.”

Soon after the start of World War II, a Japanese submarine attacked a refinery and oilfield near Los Angeles. It was the first attack of the war on the continental United States. About two dozen rounds were fired, causing little damage, but the shelling led to the largest mass sighting of UFOs in American history.

At sunset on February 23, 1942, Commander Kozo Nishino of the Imperial Japanese Navy and his I-17 submarine lurked 1,000 yards off the California coast. It was less than three months since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles residents were tense. (more…)

Natural gas pipeline scan reveals World War II shipwrecks in Gulf of Mexico.

During World War II, U-boats prowled the Gulf of Mexico to disrupt the vital flow of oil carried by tankers departing ports in Louisiana and Texas.

A 2001 archaeological survey by BP and Shell prior to construction of a natural gas pipeline confirmed discovery of U-166 about 45 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Petroleum companies today operating in the Gulf of Mexico’s outer continental shelf routinely provide government scientists with sonar data for areas with potential archaeological value. Several federal agencies review oil and natural gas-related surveys every year, and over the years the data have revealed more than 100 historic shipwrecks in U.S. waters. In 2001, the Minerals Management Service (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) noted that “a German submarine definitely got our attention.”